July, 2012

Despite numerous publicrelationssuccesses, mixed martial arts is still perceived by many people as an overtly brutal practice, and its participants as barbaric Neanderthals. In one particularly memorable instance, Gus Johnson made a most unfortunate observation during the Strikeforce: Nashville brawl when he claimed that “sometimes these things happen in MMA,” which certainly didn’t help the image of the sport. (Neither did the brawl itself, of course, but at least Johnson could have acknowledged it was an anomaly akin to a baseball brawl.)

See, in the UK they actually don’t detain their prisoners indefinitely. As a result, a number of Al Qaeda operatives have been released over the past few months and currently reside in London, the site of the 2012 Olympic Games. Whether you agree with that policy or not, this has created a legitimate safety concern for the host city. You have a bunch of paroled terrorists living in the same neighborhood without jobs or money, surrounded by people they’ve been brought up their entire lives to despise. And some of those people happen to despise their religion as well.

All of which is to say that this is an exceptionally inconvenient scenario in attempting to “cure” them of their terrorism. Of course, terrorism isn’t a disease. You don’t become a terrorist because some dude with disheveled clothes, an untrimmed beard, anger issues, and a massive superiority complex sneezes on you — it happens because of a number of complicated social, political, and economic circumstances, which serve to dissociate individuals from greater society and foster a degree of desperation that leads them to turn to destructive organizations that extinguish their capability for empathy.

In terms of her sharp wit and passion for MMA, adult-film star Carmen Valentina is definitely one of us. Then again, she makes her living having wild sex on camera, which makes her pretty unique among CagePotato contributors. And since Carmen hasn’t graced us with her lovely presence in a while, we figured it was time to collect more of your questions for another no-holds-barred mailbag column.

Please toss your queries into the comments section below, or tweet them @cagepotatomma with the tag #askcarmen. Despite what the headline says, your questions don’t all have to be about the girl in your office who keeps rejecting your advances. You can ask Ms. Valentina pretty much anything that’s on your mind. But please skim through her first “Ask Carmen” column to make sure you’re not covering familiar territory. Sound good? Thanks for your support, and be sure to follow Carmen Valentina on twitter!

“It was pretty silly of course when I heard it, but it’s Michael Bisping. Everyone pretty much expects something ridiculous to come out of his mouth, right? I mean, that’s pretty much what he does.”

Said Bisping: “Listen pal, when you were a glint in your dad’s eye, I was kicking ass in the UFC.”

“And probably saying ridiculous things, also,” Benavidez continued. “It’s not gonna change the fact that [Demetrious Johnson and I are] the top two guys in the world and that we’re going out to make history that night. So everyone that supports us, thanks and we love you. Everyone that doesn’t, including Bisping, I think you soon will and you’ll be excited for this. So yeah man, it’s gonna be great, and [*pats Bisping on the shoulder*] glad to have you on the card as co-main, buddy.”

Ooooooh, burn! Notably absent from the press conference was BJ Penn, which made Rory MacDonald question where his opponent’s was at. As MacDonald said later in the press conference (via MMAMania):

(Buy all of the Lombard stock you can….wait…he WHAT?! THEN SELL DAMMIT, SELL!!)

If you are the type of MMA fan that gets his news from CagePotato and only CagePotato, we’d like to thank you for your dedication. Surely you will be rewarded in the afterlife for your selfless sacrifice. At the same time, you’ve more than likely missed out on all of the middleweight calamity that has happened over the past few days, as we deemed it less important than photos of mutilated hands, anti-Mandy Moore smear campaigns, and things of that nature. Clearly we made the right choice, but like we said, we appreciate your dedication.

To sum up the middleweight soap opera in a few sentences, Vitor Belfort tried to call out Chris Weidman, stating both a respect for the fact that Weidman is the top dog at 185 (as we previously stated), and realizing that a win over Weidman would be the easiest path to another shot at Anderson Silva. Weidman promptly denied Belfort, claiming that he had all the respect in the world for the former LHW champ, but simply put, “[he] had his shot” and “right now is my time.”

Urijah Faber may have come up short in every sense of the word against Renan Barao last weekend, but fortunately for him, he received some sound advice from undisputed middleweight champion Chael Sonnen in the aftermath of his loss that will undoubtedly alter the course of his career from this day forward. As you recall, Sonnen became the first man in MMA History to defeat Anderson Silvatwice at UFC 148, when he straight-up embarrassed the now-retired “pound-for-pound great” by KO’ing him with a second round spinning backfist so spectacular that the WWE had to steal it to make one of their fights more entertaining and less gay and stuff.

In what is undoubtedly a new low for the hypocritical, sciolistic dingbats behind the anti-UFC machine known as The Culinary Union, a video was recently released attacking the UFC’s sweetheart, Mandy Moore, as a result of her long time ties with the promotion. Beautiful, innocent, harmless Mandy Moore. Using the same blissfully ignorant and fact-less approach as fellow propaganda pushers The April and Wayne Show, The Union’s newest video is little more than a two minute smear campaign aimed at the UFC, using footage of everything from Dana White’s rant against Loretta Hunt to Rampage Jackson’s near impregnating of a certain CP reporter as “evidence” that Ms. Moore (and any other UFC proponent, for that matter) is unfit to be a role model for our children. IT MAKES TOTAL SENSE, YOU GUYS.

Video after the jump. Caution: It may cause unexpected, rage-induced nosebleeds.

Before UFC 134 marked the promotion’s highly anticipated return to Brazil, Royce Gracie trolled the MMA community pretty hard by claiming that he not only wanted to fight on the card, but also that he had been negotiating with the UFC in order to make this happen. Needless to say, Royce wasn’t successful.

With the UFC 153 fight card beginning to fill out for the promotion’s return to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, it now appears that one time UFC competitor Renzo Gracie wants in on the action. But, you know, only if it’s cool with everyone. As MMAWeekly is reporting:

“That’s a possibility. In my life I learned one thing, impossible is nothing,” Gracie stated about possibly competing at UFC 153.

“I love the crowd there. I love the intensity that surrounds the whole arena when you’re in Brazil fighting and Brazil is cheering. It’s a different ball game.”

After battering and busting up Urijah Faber en route to his 29th straight victory, newly-crowned interim bantamweight champion Renan Barao proved to the world at UFC 149 that his win streak was the product of hard work and dedication, not the culmination of years spent crushing cans that seemed to be the case for a certain somebody making his long awaited debut just one fight before. This is not to say that Hector Lombard doesn’t push himself as a fighter — by all accounts he does the exact opposite, in fact — but to say that Lombard was the first fighter to come to the UFC on a huge win streak, only to have said streak invalidated almost immediately would be a bold faced lie (Jason Reinhardt, anyone? How about our buddy Sean McCorkle?).

But when guys who have spent years fighting below their level come up short on the big stage, it just makes it all the more impressive to see the Barao’s and Ryan Jimmo‘s of the world succeed in living up to their hype. Simply put, it’s no coincidence that most of the guys with the greatest win streaks in the sport are all champions, and the rest are either made up (I shall refer you to the infamous tale of Craig Rehage as my primary example) or busted as soon as the fighter faces some legit competition.

However, when trying to determine which champion has the most impressive win streak of them all, we surprisingly found ourselves at odds. Some of us went with the obvious choice in Anderson Silva, some of us thought that Jon Jones’ streak was more impressive, and ReX thought that Ronda Rousey’s run stood atop them all before snatching a copy of her ESPN magazine shoot and running off to our executive bathroom. He has yet to return.

So as is often the case when we are struggling to decide upon an issue, we will hand the power over to you, Potato Nation. After the jump, you will find a survey. The topic: “Which Current Champion Has the Greatest Win Streak in MMA?” You WILL vote on this poll, and you WILL leave us your convincing arguments in the comments section. Sound good?